South Reed's Beach

South Reed's Beach

PROJECT 6C: COMPLETING RESTORATION OF SOUTH REEDS, COOKS, AND NORTH PIERCE’S POINT BEACHES

The beaches from South end of Reeds Beach to the north end of Pierce’s Point are the most important beaches on NJ side of Delaware Bay for shorebirds and horseshoe crabs. The north end of Pierce’s was restored in our earlier project, but the beach template was not completely restored because of budget and timing limitations. In this project we plan to fulfill the original template as designed in our original project. The beaches provide over a mile of nearly undisturbed beach habitat dissected by three small intertidal creeks. The mouths of the creeks are themselves important parts of this small landscape of horseshoe crab breeding habitat because the shoals provide inter-tidal breeding habitat and the outer shoals protect the inner shoals from wind driven waves, which will shut down spawning on open beaches. In spring of 2013 our team restored Sandy damage to the beaches so they were adequate for crab spawning. Some of the sand was lost to creek mouths since then. We will fully restore the beaches to their intended profiles with this project thus leaving both beaches and creek mouths fully restored.